Authoritative performances.

Christopher O'Riley combines a piano technique of remorseless brilliance with a fastidious musical intelligence. He has asserted himself as one of the most formidable and best-loved pianists of his generation. He appears throughout the United States and Europe as a recitalist, soloist with orchestra, and chamber musician. His repertory encompasses the literature of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. O'Riley, who was born in Chicago and reared in Pittsburgh, launched his career by winning prizes in the major international piano competitions. A pianist in the grand manner, he especially favors the colorful, large-scale works of the uniquely pianistic master composers like Chopin, Liszt, Ravel, Scriabin, and Schumann. O'Riley's playing is, of course, the product of his distinct personality. But there can be little doubt that his profile as an artist is also the result of the dramatic tension between the stern conservatism of his musical training and the sensuous flamboyance of his own innate temperament. He is at once architect, dramatist, colorist, and dancing master; he is the intellectual's hedonist.

Review:

"Christopher O'Riley is another pianist I'm awfully enthusiastic about, and these canny accounts of Ravel's piano music show why. He combines solid keyboard technique with a skeptical intelligence that is becoming to these pieces, with their carefully distanced sensuality. In the "Valses Nobles et Sentimentales," O'Riley shrewdly balances the array of sensibilities - the tenderness, simplicity, irony and ruefulness - that infuse Ravel's writing. He also meets the music's technical challenges fearlessly. The first movement of "Gaspard de la Nuit" may not swirl enough for my taste, but the melodies are pointed and precise, and the other movements sound terrific." (San Francisco Examiner)

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More InfoiTunesADAMS, BRIEF, SESSIONS, HELPSO'Riley Plays American Piano Music